


There's a Better Way (For You and Me to Be)

by askboo



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Depression, Happy Ending, M/M, PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Stucky Secret Santa 2014, Vegetarian Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:33:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2852618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/askboo/pseuds/askboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve focuses on Bucky’s chin, thinking. “You fell in love with me because I’m more selfish?”</p><p>Bucky kisses him again, then trails kisses up his jaw, his cheek. “Not selfish,” he whispers. “Lighter. You laugh and you smile and you crack jokes in ways I never saw before. I came back here and the weight of the whole fucking world had left you. I fell in love with you because I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and this time I think you might actually stick around to do it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's a Better Way (For You and Me to Be)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [djemso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/djemso/gifts).



> It's hard to realistically give Steve and Bucky a happy ending, but Christmas isn't for realism. For them, I made everything easy, and for you, I give you bisexual!Steve and lots of Peggy. 
> 
> Merry Christmas!

**March, 2018**

Bucky moves in to Steve’s apartment two years after he gets his memories back. Steve has moved to New York by then. Bucky had been very careful to wait until he hadn’t needed to live with Steve before he agreed to. It felt right that way. He wanted it to be something that he wanted to do, and nothing else.

Steve looks up from the crossword one morning (he has to cheat to find many of the answers to modern clues, but it helps him with his research anyway) to find Bucky looking around the apartment, a pinched look on his face.

“What?”

Bucky’s nose scrunches up. “I hate it,” he says.

Steve blinks, looking around as well. He knows Bucky pretty damn well and thinks he should be able to identify what he might find so distasteful, but he doesn’t. “You hate what?”

Bucky rotates his metal wrist, flicking his hand to indicate the room.

“What-- _the apartment_?” Steve demands, insulted. “Why?”

“It’s sterile,” Bucky says quietly, looking at the cream carpet, the beige walls. “It’s empty. You don’t even have a couch, let alone a TV. Plants? A coffee table? You don’t even have anything personal. I’d never be able to tell who lived here.”

Now Steve’s face is the one that’s pinched. Bucky laughs. “I’m not the first person to tell you this, am I?”

“I don’t watch TV,” Steve insists stubbornly. “What do I need all those things for?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and tugs out his phone. Sam answers on the second ring, happy to hear from him. He’s even happier when he hears what Bucky has to say.

“Yeeeeeeees,” Sam cries. “Hell yeah I’ll come shopping. Oh my God, I’ve been telling him for ages. Don’t go anywhere, I’m bringing my van. That kid needs a futon.”

+

Steve looks at the grey couch with red pillows, the low, square coffee table in rich brown, the matching brown recliner chair with the grey pillow, the glass bookshelf. All the little books and paintings and pots that make the final decorative touch. His artist’s eye is pleased. He admits he would be proud to say he lived here.

Bucky settles himself on the couch with a happy sigh, hugging the bright red pillow to his chest. He’d chosen all the furnishings, vetoing any of Steve’s attempts to select the cheapest option. He’d always been more of a nester than Steve. And he’d got it right. People had forgotten that Bucky was as much an artist as Steve was, because Bucky’s work had never ended up in the Smithsonian. The colours even go with him, his eyes popping blue as he gazes out the window.

“Well,” Steve says, grumpily. “Fine.”

**April 2018**

Bucky likes cappuccinos with a little bit of cinnamon.

Steve likes blended chocolate drinks with extra whipped cream and caramel drizzle. 

Or, he likes the look of utter disdain Bucky makes when he sees Steve drinking one.

One day, the barista accidentally writes ‘Ducky’ on the side of Bucky’s cup. Steve keeps the cup and cleans it out, adds a little drawing of Bucky as a duck, one of his little, webbed feet made of metal. He finds it a nice home on display in his new bookshelf. How’s that for personal. 

**July 2018**

Steve sees a girl walking her dog in Central Park one day, and his brain and his heart both register her as Peggy. He sits up, then stands, his breath leaving him in a rush. She glances over her shoulder at him, perturbed by his sudden motion, and it’s only then that Steve sees that her eyes are blue, her nose long. Not Peggy. Just a girl with finger curls and a stride that got everything done. 

Bucky has a finger in his book and he watches Steve as he sits back down, blinks as he registers the devastating heartbreak on Steve’s face. “What?” he asks softly.

“Nothing,” Steve says, his brow pulled down, schooling his features into a frown.

But Bucky has seen that expression more times than he’s seen his own in the mirror. Steve stubbornly refusing to admit to any sort of weakness. He’s never crankier than when his heart is hurting. Bucky leans across the bench and puts his mouth to Steve’s cheekbone. He waits for Steve to still in surprise before he blows a raspberry against his skin.

“Ah!” Steve jumps, shoves at Bucky’s head in annoyance. He grabs Bucky’s book and throws it on to the patch of grass on the other side of the path.

Bucky frowns at the book and then at him, disapproving, the way he always does when Steve retaliates in quick temper, as if Bucky himself hadn’t been the one to start it. It’s funnier now with the lines around Bucky’s eyes and the severity of the Winter Soldier permanently cooling his features. It makes Steve smile every time without fail, now as it did then, and the crankiness drips off of him like water.

“So I’ll ask you again,” Bucky says, slouching more comfortably into the bench.

Steve shakes his head, then tilts it up to look into the trees. “It’s stupid,” he said.

“I’m certain of that,” Bucky says. 

Laughter punches its way out of Steve’s throat and he closes his eyes. “I just...a girl walked by, and I thought...for just one second, I was sure it was Peggy.”

Steve’s never talked about Peggy with anyone from this time, not Natasha, not Sam, not even Sharon. It’s so much easier to let everyone assume that Steve’s anger is born from righteousness, that his disappointment comes from what the baby boomers had done with America. So much easier than admitting that a few years wasn’t enough time for loss to feel distant, that he was angry he’d been in love once and was still in love and all he’d got was one goddamn kiss and no dance. So much easier than admitting that everyone he’d loved had died choking or plummeting and even now Peggy would die alone and scared, and nobody, there was literally nobody left who cared about those people except him. 

He’s broken out of his thoughts by a touch on his chin, as Bucky tugs his head down so he can meet his eyes. “That ain’t stupid, pal,” he says.

“It is--”

“It ain’t,” Bucky says, tightening his grip and shaking Steve’s head a little from side to side. “What’s stupid about getting upset at seeing someone who looks like your girl? A girl you lost.”

“It’s been a long time,” Steve says.

“Not for you,” Bucky says. “A woman like that, you don’t forget quick.”

Steve remembers the way Bucky’s eyes had lingered on Peggy, on her hips in that dress. But also the way he had smiled when Steve had got around to telling him about her, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe there was a dame on this earth that was such a good match for him. “She’ll kick your ass into gear,” he’d said, satisfied. “Give my foot a break.”

Steve smiles now and wraps an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. “I didn’t forget you either,” he says.

Bucky put his lips against Steve’s cheek and blows again. This time Steve laughs, wrapping an arm around Bucky and keeping him tucked close. “So,” Bucky mumbles into his shirt. “Let’s go visit her.”

**February 2019**

As private as Bucky is, the state of his mental health doesn’t belong to him. His work with the Avengers requires him to have ongoing therapy, bi-monthly psychiatric evaluations, anti anxiety medication. His team has to know that Bucky has episodes of derealisation, and could begin to panic at any point during a mission. It’s just how it has to be. Bucky doesn’t mind it as much as he could. He’s always been that type of person who will do what it takes to get something done. Made him a good student, a good soldier, a good assassin. He’s not ashamed of it, and none of the Avengers have been anything but supportive. Even Tony has refrained from making jokes at his expense. There’s no real point in keeping it secret.

No one knows about Steve. Not Natasha, not Sam. It had taken a long time for even Bucky to understand. He’d never seen this happen to Steve when they were kids. Steve, the criminally early riser, still wrapped in his blankets at 4 in the afternoon, the shades drawn. No fever, no coughing. Just sleep, and aches so deep he shook. Steve, who would have dragged himself out of bed with pneumonia just to see his mother off to work, who was obsessively punctual and dedicated to work, couldn’t leave his bed for hardly anything. Not plans already made, not Nick Fury on the phone, not even to be Captain America. It only happens sometimes, and he’d only slept through one attack on New York. Bucky had suited up as Cap in his place, and they’d explained it away by saying it’d been food poisoning. But Bucky knew it couldn’t go on like this forever. 

Bucky likes sleeping with a fan, but those moments when this happens to Steve, he brings it into his room instead, sets it up so it blows gently on his face. He brings the blankets from his bed and piles them on top of him. He doesn’t make him talk, doesn’t force him to eat. He lays down next to him sometimes, rubs his back and his shoulders. Whispers to him when the tears fall thick and fat down his cheeks. Waits with him for it to be over, so at the very least he knows he’s not alone.

“You should at least tell Sam,” Bucky says to him one morning, when it’s over, Steve having just got out of the shower, shaved and looking too exhausted for someone who had slept for 3 days straight. 

“What’s the point?” Steve says, gravelly. He sits down at the table next to Bucky and reaches to steal some of his grapefruit. 

“Sam doesn’t care about your image as Captain America,” Bucky says, shoving the plate between them so Steve will keep eating. “In fact, none of them would. They’re all soldiers, Steve. They all struggle. Bruce says yoga--”

“I’m not doing yoga,” Steve mutters, jaw tightening.

“Why not?” Bucky demands. 

“Because it won’t work,” he says. His eyes are dull with the disappointment of someone who had been failed by medicine over and over again. It’s not the 40’s anymore, but Steve still doesn’t trust that alternative methods will ever help him. They never did before. His body was too broken then and sometimes his mind feels too broken now.

Bucky sighs and wipes the fruit juice off his hand on to his pyjama pants. Steve is going to be just as stubborn and embarrassed about this as he was about his illnesses before. Bucky lifts his flesh hand to Steve’s cheek, strokes his jaw with his thumb. “You gotta try, Steve,” he says softly. “Maybe not yoga, but something. You at least gotta talk with somebody. You don’t deserve to hurt like this.”

Steve closes his eyes and leans into Bucky’s hand. He sighs out. 

“Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of,” Bucky whispers. “You got more than enough good reasons, and you don’t even need a reason. Ain’t no different than having asthma. It just happens.”

Steve opens his eyes again, looks at him. Bucky, who suffered so much torture and trauma, who has anxiety and PTSD. He’s still picking Steve up by the back of his shirt and telling him it’s gonna be alright. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he whispers.

Bucky smiles. “That ain’t gonna happen again, pal.”

**September 2019**

Bucky installs a pull up bar in the doorway between the living room and hallway, has Tony come over and reinforce it with some ridiculous metal that neither Steve nor Bucky will tear through the wall. Steve finds that it helps when he’s feeling restless or can’t sleep. As strong as he is, Bucky still takes issue with Steve going for runs in the middle of the night.

Bucky is sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room one night, working on the shoulder and back stretches that his physiotherapist gave him to help with pain from the metal arm. His laptop is open in front of him, some sci-fi movie blaring loud, but when Steve drops down from the pull-up bar, sweaty and tired, he finds that Bucky’s eyes are on him.

“What?” Steve says, wiping his forehead with his arm.

Bucky jumps and looks startled, then surprised. 

“Nothin’” he says, dropping the ‘g’ like he always does when he’s lying.

Steve narrows his eyes at him, smiling doubtfully, but he doesn’t push it. “You were commuting with the mother ship,” he teases

“Shhhh,” Bucky hushes him, eyes on the laptop again. He still looks surprised. “I’m watchin’.”

**February 2020**

Steve had never fallen in love with Bucky, against extreme odds. It may have surprised anyone, given how handsome Bucky was and always had been, given how wonderful he was, talented and charming and smart. Falling in love with James Barnes was a no brainer. 

But Steve hadn’t. He’d known Bucky was handsome, known very well how absolutely wonderful he was. And he’d loved him very much. He’d loved Bucky as much as it was possible to love someone. But it was different from how he’d loved Peggy. His stomach had never dropped when Bucky smiled. He’d never found himself aching to be touching him. Affection was warm in Steve’s blood when Bucky was around, but his veins were never white hot when he walked into the room.

That was then.

Steve had always figured if you were ever gonna fall for someone, it would happen right off the bat. That’s how it had been with Peggy. The minute he’d seen her fist connect with Hodge’s face. Even just that spark of interest, that warmth in Steve’s stomach, had always come to him at first sight. 

Who’d known that you could fall in love with someone after more than twenty years? 

Steve sees Bucky grin at him from across the room when they’re meeting somewhere or show up at the same place, and he feels like he could melt into the floor. Bucky’s small touches to his face or an arm around his shoulder start to feel good, make him warm and happy, make him want to move closer. He stares at Bucky when he’s working, reading mission details or hacking or cleaning his guns, and that sharp, deadly intelligence in his eyes makes Steve hot all over. 

He tells himself it was just that he missed Bucky. He’s just happy to be around him.

But then they’re on a mission in Baltimore, sharing a hotel room. Bucky is asleep in the bed next to him, laying shirtless on his stomach, his face turned away. His skin looks gold against the white of the sheet. Steve is sitting up in his own bed, looking at him. Eyes tracing the muscles and scars on his back. He stops lying to himself. 

“You wanna paint a picture?” Bucky mumbles.

Steve doesn’t bother asking how Bucky knew he was staring, even with his head turned. He would just smile at Steve silently, the way Natasha does. 

“Can I?”

**November 2020**

Bucky absolutely refuses to stuff the turkey. He stands in the far corner of the kitchen with his arms crossed, glaring at Natasha as she spoons it in. 

Steve leans on the counter beside him, hip to hip. His own arms are crossed, but he’s watching Bucky, smile affectionate, enjoying the accusatory frown on his face. Bucky had never particularly cared if anyone he knew ate meat. Steve had never heard him say a word about it. But apparently stuffing bread up a turkey’s ass was too far beneath a bird’s dignity for Bucky to stand it.

“The bird’s dead, Buck,” Steve says. “It doesn’t know any better.”

Bucky glares at him. “It still deserves respect,” he says. “Ain’t that why we have funerals?”

“Not for turkeys,” Steve says.

Bucky huffs. He looks like he’s working up to getting genuinely upset. Steve doesn’t have to understand his feelings to know they’re important. He wraps an arm around Bucky’s neck and kisses his hairline. He stays like that, nose buried in his hair, and closes his eyes. Eventually, he feels the tension in Bucky leak out. The metal arm curls around Steve’s waist.

“We’ll burn a candle for her,” Steve says. “I’ll put her in my Thankful list.”

Bucky chuckles, tightens his arm. “Okay,” he says quietly.

+

Steve wakes up sometimes to hear Bucky shuffling around in the next room, his voice low and quick with panic as he talks to himself. Steve will open the door to find Bucky running his hands over the walls, pinching his own skin, shaking and scared. Seeing Steve usually only makes it worse.

“You’re huge,” Bucky always gasps, his back against the wall, hands digging into his hair. “You’re _huge_ \- you’re not him, this isn’t real. This isn’t real. Stop making me--stop.”

Steve knows in these moments that Bucky honestly believes everything he sees and everything he remembers since Steve had rescued him from that chair is a figment of his imagination, a hallucination induced by Zola. His life has been just insane enough for it to seem possible. Bucky’d had small panic attacks like this during the war, before the train. But his life with Hydra had only made it all more confusing, only made it worse. 

“I’m real,” Steve says, like he always does, coming forward. He takes Bucky by the hand and pulls him into the bathroom, puts his hands in the sink. He turns the warm water on, letting it run over Bucky’s hands. The heat brings Bucky back to himself, helps him remember, quiets his breathing. Steve fills the whole tub with it and coaxes Bucky in. 

Bucky sits in the tub with the warm water up to his chest. He has one hand fisted in Steve’s shirt and he’s breathing quietly against his collarbone. It can’t be comfortable, leaning half out of the tub, but maybe that helps. Steve’s not so comfortable either, his long legs folded up on the unforgiving tile. 

He’s not thinking of the cramps in his legs, and he’s not thinking about moving. Steve has one arm wrapped around Bucky’s shoulders, his fingers tracing patterns around the top of Bucky’s spine. Bucky seems close to sleep again, and Steve thinks he is too, but he doesn’t want to move. He closes his eyes and settles in, his cheek pressed to Bucky’s. His body is humming with contentment beneath his skin. Every part of him feels so good. He could stay here ‘til the morning. He could rest another seventy years.

**December 2020**

Steve kisses Bucky for the first time when they’re both exhausted.

Their friends had come over for a holiday potluck. Steve still couldn’t get drunk, and turned out Bucky couldn’t either, but the warm cider had still left a warm glowing in Steve’s belly, or maybe that was the company. Nat had dragged Thor, Clint and Tony out the door at 2 AM (Bruce, Pepper and Sam having left at a conservative 12), leaving Bucky and Steve to sprawl out on the couch, guts sore from laughing, drunk from fatigue and staring up at the colourful lights on the tree. Bucky gets up to turn off the rest of the lights in the apartment so they can glow even brighter. When he flops back down, he flops against Steve, leaning his weight against his shoulder, head tilted back.

Steve’s body lights up in a way it never used to. Not with Bucky. He remembers a girl in the fifth grade playing with his hair, and Peggy brushing up against him as they looked over a map together. He remembers a football player in his science class, grinning and squeezing Steve’s shoulder, and a SHIELD agent named Jack who had outfitted Steve in his new uniform, his touches careful and professional, before pulling Steve into his office. His first kiss since 1945. Kissing Nat, even if he loved her only as a friend. She was a good enough kisser for that not to matter. Steve’s heart had picked up speed, his nerves dancing with pleasure, from the touches of a number of different people. But never Bucky, who touched him the most. Not until recently.

Steve still doesn’t understand it, how someone can be a friend for so long, why he would feel that way for him now, after all these years. He’s not sure if analysing the reasons is an entirely good idea. He likes it. He loves the way it feels. He puts an arm around Bucky and leans against him too, head leaned back beside his.

They stare up at the lights, blinking sleepily, their eyes slowly growing heavier. Bucky turns his head eventually to look at Steve. Steve feels his hair brush his cheek. He turns his head too, smiling slowly at the way Bucky is looking at him, so much affection in that beautiful, sleepy face. Bucky has always reverted to being like a four year old when he’s tired. Conditioning to be the Winter Soldier hadn’t changed that.

“I got you something,” Bucky whispers guiltily.

Steve fakes shock and disapproval. “We agreed not to.”

“It’s only a little thing,” he says.

“Yeah?” Steve says. “Is it a dustbuster?”

“No.”

“Is it those magnets you can keep spices in?”

“No, and stop guessing. Why do you only want household things?”

Steve laughs and bumps his nose against Bucky’s temple, charmed by his irritability. “You’re the one who wanted me to spruce the place up! Isn’t this why we agreed not to get gifts? You hated my list,” he says.

“It was a dumb list,” Bucky insists. He wobbles to his feet and goes to the tree, pulling out a tiny package hidden in the branches. He sits back down and hands it to Steve. Steve peels back the tape and the shiny red paper. His mouth drops open when he sees what’s inside. It’s the wing insignia Bucky had sown on to his jacket during the war, worn and faded now with time.

“Nat helped me get it,” Bucky says, reaching to brush his finger along the edge of the wing. “Obviously, I didn’t actually need her help but she loves breaking and entering more than any other felony. Seemed right to invite her.”

Steve feels speechless. “You broke into the Smithsonian,” he says. “To get me a Christmas present.”

“You did it first,” Bucky says defensively. “She told me.”

Steve puts the gift down in his lap and takes the back of Bucky’s neck, pulling him closer, their foreheads pressed together. He laughs quietly, shoulders shaking, overwhelmed by the gift. “I did it to save you,” Steve murmurs. “So you’d know me. I break and enter only for very serious reasons.”

Bucky smiles at him, his hands coming up to grip Steve’s arms. “I knew you in a t-shirt. You just think the old uniform is fancier,” he says. He reaches down between them to pick up the wing. “I know you already have one on your helmet, so it’s not much of a gift. But I thought...you could sew it on to your bike jacket or something. Not as a symbol of Captain America but to…” He shifts his weight. “Remind you, I guess. That I’m back.”

The wings on Bucky’s jacket had been interpreted by historians as a symbol of Bucky’s loyalty. But Steve had given Bucky the wings in the war so he would know he was safe. That he belonged to Steve. He couldn’t go anywhere where Steve wouldn’t find him, nothing could happen that Steve wouldn’t fix. Steve had seen him staring into the fire when they camped with the Commandos, his eyes terrified and lonely, his fingers idly brushing and tugging at the wings. It helped. Captain America was his personal guardian angel, and Bucky Barnes was his family. 

Of course, it hadn’t actually turned out that way.

These days, Steve has gone on long trips before, days or sometimes weeks without seeing Bucky. Sometimes he worries it was all a dream, that he’ll come home to find the apartment empty, Bucky not just gone but never having been there in the first place. Bucky must know, maybe from the nature of Steve’s texts when he’s away, or the tone in his voice when he calls. Now Steve will be able to look down at his jacket, see the wings there and know Bucky is home. 

This gift is Bucky returning the favour. 

Steve reaches up to take Bucky’s face in his hands, kisses his mouth. It feels so good that he forgets how, gasps openly against Bucky’s lips. Bucky’s eyes open wide and shocked. But it only takes a second for him to push Steve back, straddle his lap, kiss him again. Steve tries to kiss back, but each little press of lips feels so good, slams him with enough pleasure to make him useless for a few more seconds. Maybe he really is a bad kisser. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, his nails digging into Steve’s arms.

“Buck,” Steve gasps, putting his fingers against Bucky’s mouth. “You too?”

Bucky kisses the pads of his fingers and then gently pulls them away. “Yeah,” he breaths. “God, yeah.”

Steve is wide-eyed now, hands soothing up Bucky’s side, for once unable to believe his luck. “You told me you didn’t feel attracted to men,” he said, because he had. They’d talked about it before the war, when they were kids. Steve hadn’t known who else to talk about it with when he’d first noticed it about himself. No one else he’d been able to trust even a spec as much.

“I don’t,” Bucky said quietly. “Or, I didn’t. Not until lately. And not anyone else.”

Steve tries to wrap his head around that. Wonders, again, if the reasons are important. Bucky’s eyes are dark and his cheeks are flushed. He keeps looking at Steve’s mouth. What they felt before doesn’t seem as important as what they’re feeling now. 

“Does it matter?” Bucky asks, his metal hand sliding into Steve’s hair. 

“I don’t think so,” Steve says.

Bucky uses the hand in his hair to pull him in for another kiss. Steve makes each kiss last longer this time, groans with how good it feels. “I got you something too,” he gasps, remembering after a minute.

“Later,” Bucky breaths, bringing Steve’s hands down to his hips.

+

“This is the best news I’ve ever heard,” Nat says happily, riding piggy back on Steve while he runs through the park. Weight training, she says, even though she weighs nothing to Steve, and really she just got lazy around the 6 K mark. “I didn’t even consider the possibility.”

“Neither did I,” Steve confesses, rounding a bend in the path. “Is that strange?”

“That you were friends for so long and never felt anything before?” she guesses. “Were you maybe just suppressing your feelings, and losing him brought them out?”

Steve considers that for awhile. “No,” he says finally. “I really didn’t. I liked men back then, and Bucky was unfairly good looking even then, but it wasn’t...he was family. And Bucky’s never liked men. Not in a suppressing way, either. He’d have told me.”

“That’s not so uncommon,” Natasha murmurs.

“It’s not?”

“No,” she says, resting her chin on his shoulder. “You can fall in love with a person, even if they’re not what you’ve been attracted to in the past. And you can fall in love with someone after years of friendship. There’s no rules.”

Steve comes to a stop, lets Natasha slide off his back. He turns to her. “I like being able to figure this stuff out,” he says.

Natasha smiles at him, kisses his cheek. “Steve,” she says. “Enjoy it.”

+

Tony goes glassy eyed when Steve tells him. 

“I wanna watch,” he says.

Steve laughs, shoving his head. Tony never stops surprising him. He says the most unexpected things. Steve had thought for a long time that Tony was someone he would never like, but he’d eventually realized the problem was that Tony had made Steve want to be lighthearted when he wasn’t ready. 

“Let’s wait until I owe you a favour,” Steve says.

**March 2021**

Bucky coaxes Steve to try deep breathing. He tries to make it as appealing as possible, gets a couple of yoga mats and big pillows and woven blankets like the stuff they have at the studio Bucky goes to with Bruce sometimes. Bucky likes the gong meditation the best, likes lying there quietly and being at peace with himself for the first time in ages. He figures with Steve it’s better to start simple.

He sets it all up in the corner of the living room where the sun streams in and makes the floor all warm. He looks up a relaxation guide on Youtube and they listen to it together. 

Steve likes it. He doesn’t know if it’ll help, but he likes it. He doesn’t think he’ll actually get tired of being able to breathe so deeply, so easily. It feels good to just lie in the sun and concentrate on it. When the video ends, they stay lying there, eyes closed, breathing deep.

Eventually, Bucky sits up and leans over him, kisses him. “Thanks for trying it,” he whispers. “I’m proud of you.”

**April 2021**

Steve starts using the pull-up bar shirtless. On purpose. He can do an entire extra set just from the rush he gets from the way Bucky watches him from the couch. It’s the Winter Soldier in his eyes again, sharp and steady, but the heat is all Bucky and he doesn’t have to bother hiding it anymore.  
Bucky stands up eventually and comes to stand underneath Steve. Steve drops down but his feet never touch the ground. Bucky catches him by the haunches and hauls his legs around Bucky’s waist. He holds him up effortlessly.

The kiss is searing. Steve moans, still overwhelmed by how good it feels. They’ve converted seamlessly from friends to lovers. Bucky hasn’t struggled with it at all. Steve is so grateful that for once something in their lives is easy.

+

Bucky doesn’t like it so much when he’s angry at Steve and Steve is using the pull-up bar passive aggressively to get Bucky to forgive him. He yanks Steve down to him instead of waiting for him to drop, and topples them over to the floor. 

Steve usually gets carpet burns as a result of those kinda days.

**May 2021**

“Would this have happened anyway?” Steve murmurs. 

They’re staying at the Tower that night and laying out on a patio together, wishing they could see the stars. It’s a warm spring.

Bucky shifts his head on Steve’s stomach, looks over at him. “No,” he says softly. “You’d have married Peggy.”

Steve swallows, nods. He knows it to be true. He would have married Peggy and he would have had Bucky as his best man, standing up there with him. She’d have looked so beautiful in her dress. Bucky would have doted on his and Peggy’s kids, so good with them like he’d been with his brothers and sisters. It’s a dream Steve still mourns even as in love with Bucky as he is now.

Bucky shifts up so he’s laying on Steve’s shoulder instead. “Plus,” he says. “I’m in love with you now. Not the man you were back then.”

Steve doesn’t feel so different. But then, change is hard to monitor in yourself. He scrunches up his nose. “How come?”

“Well,” Bucky says. “You were kinda annoying.”

Steve leans down and bites his ear, tugging. 

Bucky laughs. “You were!” he says. “You were so obsessed with doing what was right and you didn’t care about the consequences, for you or anyone. But especially you. It’s hard to love a guy who doesn’t care about getting home eventually. I’m a pragmatist.”

“You did love me, though,” Steve says. “Just not like this.”

“Yeah,” Bucky admits, sighs like he doesn’t know what the hell he was thinking. “I don’t know, then.”

“Am I so different now?” Steve asks, shifting down and rolling on his side so he’s facing Bucky, nose to nose.

Bucky smiles, rubbing his thumb along Steve’s jaw. He leans in for a kiss. “Only a little,” he says quietly. “You’re still you. Still stupid. Noble. But you’re...more grounded, now. Not so black and white. I feel like if someone asked you to go on some suicide mission, you would at least think about refusing. You’d think about what the world owes you instead of the other way around.”

Steve focuses on Bucky’s chin, thinking. “You fell in love with me because I’m more selfish?”

Bucky kisses him again, then trails kisses up his jaw, his cheek. “Not selfish,” he whispers. “Lighter. You laugh and you smile and you crack jokes in ways I never saw before. I came back here and the weight of the whole fucking world had left you. I fell in love with you because I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and this time I think you might actually stick around to do it.”

Bucky rolls on to Steve, and pushes up on his arms, looking down at him. “I spent our whole life trying to get you to lighten up,” he says. “But you did it on your own.”

Steve reaches up, runs his fingers through Bucky’s hair. “I guess the future’s been good for me,” he murmurs. 

Bucky smiles, kisses Steve’s wrist. “How come you fell in love with me?”

“I like bruisers,” Steve says. Bucky’s mouth drops open. “Face it, Buck. You were kinda vanilla before. Straight-As, athlete, got along with your folks. I’da been bored to tears.”

Bucky shuts his mouth. He knows Steve is only half joking. “Peggy sure was a bruiser,” he murmured. “Hell of a woman.”

Steve pulls Bucky down for a kiss, smiling against his lips. “Maybe we would have arranged a ménage à trois eventually,” he says.

**October 2025**

Bucky sits up in bed. He’d only been sleeping uneasily, the way he always did when Steve was on a mission Bucky himself wasn’t assigned to. Steve is standing in the doorway now, his Captain America costume dirty and torn. His lip is split and his cheek has burns on it. His eyes are bright and overflowing with tears.

Bucky gets up on his knees, takes Steve’s face as carefully as he can in his hands, his own eyes spilling without even needing to know what was wrong. 

“Steve,” he whispers.

He lays back down, bringing Steve with him, letting him hide in his neck, his shoulders shaking. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Steve whispers.

Bucky wraps his arms around him tight, his nose in Steve’s hair. “Do what?”

“I don’t want to be Captain America anymore,” he says against Bucky’s skin.

Bucky pulls back to look down at Steve in shock. He pushes the hair back from Steve’s miserable eyes, wondering if he’d been poisoned or mind controlled or any of the other less crazy things that had happened. A little alien living in Steve’s brain and controlling his body would make more sense than Steve ever backing down. He hasn’t put the shield down in 13 years.

“Steve,” he says softly, stroking his hair. “You’ve just been tired lately.”

“No,” Steve replies, pushing himself up. “I’ve been done. Feels like nothing I ever do is enough for anyone, feels like I’m always in the wrong. With SHIELD. The government. I can’t make the world right and I don’t wanna die trying. Not anymore. Not for them. I want to live my life with you.”

Bucky takes Steve’s face in his hands again, wipes the tears away. He studies Steve’s face for a long time, wondering if this is something Steve is gonna change his mind about in the morning. Wondering if something Bucky has wanted since 1943 is actually within his grasp.

He’ll wait for morning.

He kisses Steve and then takes his hand, pulling him out of bed. “C’mon,” he whispers. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

**May 2026**

The house they buy is in British Columbia and has three floors, two staircases, a working fireplace. It’s too big for two kids from Brooklyn to have ever dreamed of.

Bucky looks around the massive living room with a frown, rotating his metal wrist, flicking his hand to indicate the house.

“It’ll do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come be my friend on [tumblr](http://askboo.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
